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Monday, 25 February 2013

When a foreign leader descends on the Turkish capital for a
working visit, the journalists from that country invariably use the leaders’
joint press conference to ask about Turkey’s record on freedom of expression.

“You have more journalists are in prison than China,” is the
standard line of attack. “Shouldn’t you do something about that?”

Never before has Turkey been so far down the road towards
peace with its Kurdish minority.

In themselves, negotiations are nothing new. They have been
held on-and-off and in secret for years – most recently brokered by the Norwegians. The preliminary objective is, as it has
always been, to stop the fighting between the Turkish army and members of the
PKK. Of course, these talks have produced ceasefires before; all eventually
fell through.

This time might just be different. The Turkish government is
talking not only to the PKK leadership in the Iraqi-Turkish mountains, but to
the organisation’s number one himself, Abdullah Öcalan. And, for the first
time, it is openly admitting doing so. This is the so-called “İmralı process”, named
after the prison island on which the PKK leader is kept.

Let’s be plain about what it involves: Turkey is in peace
talks with the man it sentenced to death thirteen years ago.

Monday, 18 February 2013

Here’s a prediction
that won’t astonish anyone: the CHP will not win Turkey’s next general election
in two years’ time.

A victory for the
main opposition party is a monumentally difficult thing to achieve not just
because of the party’s current
leadership woes, but because the governing AK Party has a solid hold on
power.

A Metropoll survey at the end of December,
which showed a near-uniform swing in support away from the three main parties, reported
a full 25 per cent of voters saying

Thursday, 14 February 2013

Consider, if you will, the curious case of Turkey’s
ambiguous name. It can mean one of two things. The first is a parliamentary
democracy of 75 million squeezed onto the Anatolian peninsula and home to one of
the largest cities in the world. The other is a large bird that American
presidents have a penchant for pardoning every year.

Neither makes a decent bottle of wine – but beyond that,
they have few things in common. The bird
is not indigenous to the country. In the country’s main language, the bird is
named after another country - India. You cannot seriously confuse
the two.

But some people in Turkey see clarity as an opportunity for
bewilderment: there is a campaign, growing in voice, for the country to adopt Türkiye as its English name.

This is where I write about these and other things. I now live away from Turkey, but still work for it - for its national broadcaster, to be exact - and visit rather often, so it should be with some degree of credibility.

Let me know what you think through comments on individual posts or contact@jamesinturkey.com